Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested to ensure that AI succeeds, but what happens if it doesn't pay off? Massive investments by the world's biggest tech companies have fuelled growing concern about whether the AI boom can live up to expectations. With so much future revenue riding on the technology, some economists warn that reality may fall short, raising fears about the consequences for the global economy.
One year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States. Standing alongside him that day were the leaders of the tech industry's most powerful companies, who had donated to him in an unprecedented bending of the knee. In the ensuing year, the companies have reaped enormous rewards from their alliance with Trump, which my colleague Nick Robins-Early and I wrote about last month after Trump signed an executive order prohibiting states from passing laws regulating AI.
It's been almost 20 years since I started my career in product design, and, as you might imagine, many things have changed dramatically since then. One of the main characteristics of the technology industry is the constant evolution of its dynamics, roles, processes, technologies, experiences, and even business models. Those changes are inevitable and will continue. In retrospect, I see that there is one reality that has not changed much over the last 20 years and remains a constant issue to this day: building technology products can sometimes be a discouraging and exhausting process, from junior positions to senior management levels. Why do we suffer every time we need to build something? Why is there so much burnout among today's tech professionals? Why is it that, regardless of the industry, company, or technology, we always hear the exact phrases: "I'm exhausted, I feel drained by this job."? Well, those are valid questions that still haunt me 20 years after my first web design job. It seems like there's no choice in this environment but to suffer.
"It just felt like falling off a cliff," Graham, now the founder of Glue Club, said in a recent interview on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast. "Taking risks, accepting the terrible fall and that experience of falling has been more than worth it." Graham described the experience as part of what she calls the "J-curve" - a career trajectory where a risky move leads to an initial drop before eventually producing outsized gains. Visually, she describes it as standing on a ledge, stepping off, sinking briefly, and then rising far higher than where you started - just like the shape of the letter J.
Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla, known as the Magnificent Seven, now have a combined market value of over $20 trillion, making them among the most powerful companies in history. Who is handling their financial records? Another numerically-termed group of powerhouses. The Big Four professional services firms - PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG - are the industry-leading consulting and accounting firms that audit the Magnificent Seven.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at blocking states from enforcing their own artificial intelligence (AI) regulations. "We want to have one central source of approval," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. It will give the Trump administration tools to push back on the most "onerous" state rules, said White House AI adviser David Sacks. The government will not oppose AI regulations around children's safety, he added.
Day Job cofounder Rion Harmon described the vision: a "cacophony of logos" slapped all over the screen (a nod to Formula 1 racecars), a "country club" forest green, and a VHS visual effect.
Bending Spoons, the Italian software company that has bought up a range of other digital businesses like Evernote, MeetUp, WeTransfer, and soon Vimeo, announced plans to purchase AOL from Yahoo after securing a $2.8 billion debt financing package. Over the past couple of decades, AOL has been passed from company to company, merging with Time Warner in 2001 before getting spun off and sold to Verizon in 2015 for $4.4 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is spending untold billions on infrastructure and top talent for its AI ambitions. In fact, the CEO announced during the company's earnings call on Wednesday, Meta will be spending between $70 billion and $72 billion on AI this year - up from its previous estimate of $66 billion to $72 billion, as CNBC reports. Unsurprisingly, that cash bonfire isn't going over well with investors.
President Trump had planned an operation to "surge" San Francisco by marching National Guard troops into the city, but was convinced to alter course, he said on a post on his social network Truth Social on Thursday. Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff were among the tech industry's luminaries who called him and convinced him to change his mind, the post said. San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie confirmed in a statement that the military operation had been planned and called off, although he didn't name names as to who had conversations with the President.
The new legal drama TV series "Cupertino" was just announced as part of CBS's 2026-2027 season, as reported by entertainment trade publications Wednesday morning. The show, from Robert and Michelle King of "The Good Wife" and "The Good Fight" fame, is set to star Mike Colter ("Luke Cage," "Evil") as a lawyer whose tech startup employer cheats him out of his stock options.
In remarks to Catholic newspaper Crux in July, which were published over the weekend, the Pope reflected on the "continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive." "Yesterday [there was] the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world," he told the newspaper. "What does that mean, and what's that about?"
